Day 14 - Tue 12/18/18 - At Sea to Florida - Day 8

Today is our last day at sea and the schedule is pretty light. All but a couple hundred passengers are departing tomorrow and we get a whole new set of passengers joining us. Throughout the day the seas were extremely calm and we finally saw some land in the afternoon along with several other vessels. As darkness came, we joined a parade of two other ships (Caribbean Princess and Costa Deliciosa). All of the ship were well lit and formed an impressive parade.

During the day the big events were the Ask the Captain session followed by Robin Ross speaking on Pirate Radio and street art. In the afternoon, Don Mings gave his Pirates of the Caribbean presentation in the small lecture room on Deck 12. It was an overflow crowd.  

After a light dinner in the Lido, we watched a set at the dueling pianos before watching the 9pm inaugural performance of Stages by the Step One dance team. Normally HAL does not put on a major stage show on the last night of the cruise, but it was necessary to accommodate a cast member recovering from a leg injury. It was quite good, and we get to see it again on the next segment.

After watching the final set of the dueling pianos, we walked around on deck 11 in the dark, and noted that Christmas lights were now installed. They are beautiful.

Coming back to our stateroom, there was a cruise log waiting. Using the stats in the log I computed that the ship gets 95 feet per gallon! This is almost twice as efficient as the Maasdam cruise we recently completed. During that cruise we got 56 feet per gallon. The NS is twice as big and gets twice the efficiency. I call that impressive!

With that, we look forward to our turnaround day in Ft. Lauderdale.  Stay tuned!

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